Our yearly commemoration of AIDS Day includes our award-winning film series "Faces of AIDS," as well as resources and a round-up of first-rate editorial features on the state of the epidemic - plus, new for 2012, "Portraits of Hope" - an interactive exhibit of creative individuals who have been touched by the disease.

For those Americans who want to serve their country in the military, having HIV is a dealbreaker, as military policy says soldiers must be able to withstand adverse situations and potential combat scenarios. But what about active service members?

Although many people can now live long, healthy lives with HIV, the stigma remains, keeping people from getting tested and fomenting violence and discrimination. Groups like The Stigma Project work to neutralize this stigma.

An HIV vaccine to inoculate high-risk populations against the virus is three decades in the making, and progress continues to be slow. An upcoming trial of a Novartis product is planned for 2015, but even if successful, won’t be widely available til 2021.

EDGE takes a look back at the year in HIV, from the FDA approval of Stribild and Truvada, to the promise of a cure with the Berlin patient, to the president’s repeal of the HIV travel ban and the 19th Annual International AIDS Conference.

While HIV/AIDS may be a manageable disease for first-world countries, in Africa, the global epidemic rages, with little resources to treat the infected. And alarming numbers of new infections continue in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Central America.